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Linking Drought and Climate Change: Difficult To Do
Geoffrey.landis writes An article about the current California drought on 538 points out that even though global climate warming may exacerbate droughts, it's nearly impossible to attribute any particular drought to climate warming: "The complex, dynamic nature of our atmosphere and oceans makes it extremely difficult to link any particular weather event to climate change. That's because of the intermingling of natural variations with human-caused ones." They also cite a Nature editorial pointing out the same thing about extreme weather.
they do it anyways.
Linking hurricanes to global warming is also difficult but that didn't prevent climate researchers from claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency. (we're still waiting on this one)
bizarro slashdot
Nope, no sir. Headlines like this are in no way shape or form fodder for the 'deniers'; which then causes the 'believers' to come out in droves. This thread will absolutely be filled to the brim with insightful, informed conversation.
Hot outside: That's global warming, man!
Cold outside: That's global warming, man!
Storming outside: That's global warming, man!
Mild outside: That's global warming, man!
Forrest Fire: That's global warming, man!
Flood: That's global warming, man!
Raining frogs and locusts: That's global warming, man!
He was quite the stoner scientist, that one.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
DENIER! DENIER!
The science is settled!
That weather is not climate!
This weather is climate!
GET EDUCATED!!!!
The california drought for example is a well known weather pattern. We get that drought every couple decades and always have.
Last time was in the 1970s. It is difficult to link because natural forces are actually the cause of that drought.
As to other droughts, I really couldn't speak to every single one on earth. Just the ones I am personally aware of... and without exception, they're all normal natural processes that have been recorded in those regions for as long as we've kept records.
Attributing any known and consistent weather pattern to global warming is dishonest or ignorant. Pick one.
It is like blaming summer on global warming or winter on global cooling. Neither one is valid unless we consider changes in the earth's orbit to be global warming/cooling.
We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
During the 1980s, the tobacco companies frequently cited the fact that no case of cancer had ever been demonstrably proven to be caused by cigarette smoking. I had a close relative with a severe addiction who repeated this whenever nonsmokers (like me) complained. This highlights the dichotomy of statistical evidence versus absolute proof. In order to prove that a cancer victim inhaling burning tobacco caused their cancer, you would have to track the specific molecules of the smoke's chemicals that damaged the initial cancer cell's DNA. You'd need to observe the cell dividing out of control, and verify that that particular tumor was the one that lead to the diagnosis. Apparently, the fact that something is incredibly hard to prove can be used as evidence that it can't possibly be happening. Fortunately, most open minded people are willing to accept a vast amount of statistical evidence as proof.
Extreme weather, huh? 10 years ago we were discussing right here, how continuing global warming will make hurricanes more frequent.
The usual suspects were writing "insightful" posts lamenting "deniers" and the sorry state of the uneducated populace preventing the sophisticated elite from saving the planet.
Today, 10 years since that discussion, we are living through a 30 year low hurricane-frequency — something, none of the "Global Warming" models predicted...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Isn't this something everyone already knew, radical warmists and evil deniers alike?
Maybe, but statistical thinking doesn't come naturally. People cheat at gambling by loading dice so that they come up snake eyes (say) 1 in 20 throws. They get away with it because even if you know the dice are loaded there is no way to link any particular snake eye event to the hidden weights. The victims simply subscribe it to luck, but the longer you play the more suspicious they will become of your "lucky streak". Same deal with storms, floods, and droughts.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is only in the headlines because of how unfortunately politicized this topic has become.
It's news because Every. Single. Story. on weather ends up talking about climate change. Dunno if that's politicalization or just flavour-of-the-week reporting, but it needs to be pointed out as the nonsense it is.
Climate is a distribution.
Weather is an event.
Distributions are made of events, but they are not events and they have properties (their mean and higher moments) that are emergent properties of the distribution, not properties of the events that make them up.
So long as idiots talk about climate change every time there is a warm spell or a cold snap, there will be a need to point out the difference between events and distributions, and the very small amount you can say about discerning between different distributions that largely overlap based on a single event, or even a small handful of events.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I'm going to lose my shit if you damned CS majors don't stop trying to correlate local weather to the frigging climate! It's a fucking non-linear system. Small scale does not equate to large scale behavior, in space or time.
Will you *please* go read up on chaos theory? At least smoke some weed and read 'Chaos' by James Gleik, try to see some pictures. Read A First Course in Turbulence by Tennekes and Lumley. I mean, shit, chaos theory has been around for longer than most of you have been alive. Read a goddamned book once in a while. The dead tree kind of book.
Maybe I need some weed.
The universe is filled with non-linear chaotic systems. Earth's climate is part of one. Deal with it!
Yep...I do need some weed.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Therein lies the quandary. You know the dice are loaded to come up snakes-eyes; they come up snakes-eyes; but you cannot with any certainty state "those snakes came up because the dice were loaded."
Instead you have to say, "those snakes-eyes coming up again so soon is consistent with the fact that the dice are loaded," or "we could see more and more snakes-eyes with these loaded dice." That doesn't make for so compelling a narrative. And narrative thinking comes much more naturally than statistical thinking.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
that didn't prevent climate researchers from claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency
No, that's the exact opposite from what climate researchers have been claiming. To repeat myself, "[w]ithin the science of climate change that regarding hurricane (and other tropical storm) formation is famously unsettled." The models at least, seem to suggest a probable decrease in the frequency of formation (along with a possible increase in intensity) (Knutson et. al.).
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke